Thirty Years
by Blahblah101111
Summary: Rory Hummel-Anderson is a teenage inventor living in the year 2041. However, when testing out a time machine with his best friends Sugar and Cameron, the three find themselves trapped in the year 2011, where they must go undercover at McKinley to fix the future.
1. Chapter 1

**So, like many in the Glee Tumblr community, I saw some of those gifs and pictures where Rory, Sugar and Harmony are the kids of Klaine/Britanna/Faberry and go back in time.**

**This is what happened when I saw those late at night. This is totally unedited and I honestly have no clue where it's going, but I figured I'd put it up, since I think it'd be fun to write all the way through.**

**Just a little note, though. I, personally, don't ship Faberry at all, so I didn't include Harmony in this (yet?), since she wouldn't exactly have parents...**

**However, I may be a little bit obsessed with Cameron Mitchell, so yes, the Cameron in here's looks are based on him. However, I needed a parent for him, so don't kill me for his last name...or if you have a better idea as to who his parents should be, just tell me because I can't think of who they should be xD**

**This is almost 100% AU, by the way, and I apologize for the annoyingly long A/N**

**Glee belongs to FOX and Ryan Murphy.**

* * *

><p>Backpack? Check.<p>

Video camera? Check.

House keys? Check.

Cell phone?

"Crap!" Rory Hummel-Anderson hissed, throwing clothes off of his bed and desk in search of his missing phone. Just when he was about to start flipping the furniture, he remembered.

"The kitchen!" he whispered to himself as he tiptoed out his bedroom door and down the hallway to the kitchen. On the counter by the fridge lay the device in question, which he promptly slid into his pocket.

Check.

Rory quickly checked the time on his watch. The green glowing numbers read "12:47 AM". Rory let out his breath, as he still had almost a half an hour before he was supposed to met Sugar at Dalton. Sneaking back up to his room, he sighed at the mess he'd left before grabbing his backpack off the now-clear desk. Dad was totally going to give him hell once he saw the room. Then again, Papa would probably cut him some slack like he always did, so he wouldn't be in too much trouble.

Sneaking back downstairs and out the front door, quietly as possible so as not to wake his dads, Rory made sure the house was locked before stepping out into the night. He let out a groan when he realized it was raining, so he broke into a sprint. Luckily, Dalton was only a few blocks away, so it wouldn't take to long to reach the boarding school.

Completely winded and vowing never to run again for as long as he lived, Rory made it to the front of Dalton Academy by 1:05 AM, a whole ten minutes early.

"Good job, buddy." Rory patted himself on the back. He was somewhat notorious for consistently being late to everything, from Glee rehearsals at McKinley to Dad's weekly Friday night dinners, so being early was quite an accomplishment.

Making his way to the right, Rory walked until he found the familiar hole in the rusty gates of the once-inhabited boarding school building. Glancing around to ensure no one was watching, he swiftly slipped through the gap and made a dash for the building's side door. Once there, he rapped the large metal door four times with the side of his knuckle, receiving four identical raps from the opposite side before the door opened to reveal a short brunette clad in an old-fashioned white lab coat and a pair of thick black-rimmed glasses.

"How astounding! You're early!" the girl exclaimed, a look of surprise on her face.

"Very funny, Sugar. Now let me in, I'm soaking." Rory replied, pushing past her and closing the door behind them. "And you know, I am capable of being early or on time on occasion."

"Yeah, but that happens about as often as Harmony shuts up during Glee practice." Sugar Pierce-Lopez replied with a smirk, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

Rory chuckled with his best friend before the two of them headed up a dark staircase, down a few hallways and finally to a room they visited all too often.

"Hey Cameron! Rory's here!" Sugar yelled, knocking rapidly on the glass pane of the old classroom door.

"Wait, but it's early! How did that happen?" a voice replied from the other side of the door.

"Hey, shut up and just let us in, Cameron!" Rory smiled and shook his head at the comment.

The door swung open, a tall, skinny, shaggy-haired brunette standing in the doorway. He wore a lab coat to match Sugar's, and also wore black-framed glasses, but his were in the large style of retro Ray-Bans.

"Welcome." Cameron Abrams said in a low voice as he gestured for the two other teens to enter the room. The two obliged, and as Cameron shut the door behind them, they found themselves in the middle of a highly complex laboratory, machines and computers whirring as chemicals bubbled on lab tables at the far end of the old chemistry room.

"Home sweet home." Rory sighed, tossing his backpack to the floor and slipping on his own dry lab coat that was hanging on the back of the door over his damp clothing. From the pocket of the coat he pulled out his own glasses, black-rimmed like Sugar and Cameron's, and slid them over his eyes. The glasses immediately whirred to life, booting up display screens on the edges of his field of view once his DNA was confirmed. Rory had to admit, out of all the gadgets he and his friends had made over the past three years since they'd started up the laboratory, the glasses were probably one of his favorites, another being the target-lock marshmallow gun they'd invented in their earlier days.

"Okay, Sugar. Now that we're both here, what exactly is it that you want to show us as such an ungodly hour?" Cameron asked, leaning against the edge of a lab table. "And if it has anything to do with those guinea pigs you've been feeding chemicals to, I've told you a million times that I don't want to have anything to do with it."

"No, this is much more important than Herman and Jamie! And those tests are going excellently, I'll have you know!" Sugar huffed indignantly, crossing her arms across her chest.

"Yeah, if you count 'excellently' as 'slowly killing poor innocent guinea pigs by exposing them to radioactive materials'" Rory quipped, earning him a loud laugh from Cameron as Sugar glared at the two of them.

"Fine. I see just how much you two appreciate my work," Sugar turned her back to the boys and stepped over to her own personal computer hooked up the the wall. "So I guess I'll just keep the finished formulas for time travel all to myself, then."

Rory felt as if his jaw came completely unhinged, unable to create a coherent response out of shock. Cameron, apparently, was not the same way, as Rory could have sworn his eardrums burst when Cameron yelled "WHAT?" louder than any human he'd ever heard.

"B-b-but how!" Rory finally managed to stutter out. Time travel was an experiment the trio had been working on even since before the lab, but they'd always had to complete the final equations, which they'd been stuck on for several years. In fact, the goal to figure time travel out was one of the main reasons why they'd decided to build the laboratory.

"A few weeks ago, I decided to look over some of the old stuff we'd scrapped when we first came up with the basic conceptual formulas for time travel, and it turns out that we'd actually come up with a major piece of the final equations at the beginning without even realizing it!" Sugar explained excitedly as she brought up a series of complex mathematical equations and formulas on her computer monitor.

"Wait," Cameron began skeptically, "you've known the answer for weeks and you haven't bothered to tell us at all?"

"Well of course not. I had to test the machine first before I could tell you two idiots." Sugar typed a few commands into the computer, bringing even more screens full of numbers and variables.

"Are you trying to tell us that you've actually time traveled already? Without us?" Rory practically yelled. The three of them had been working on this for as long as they could remember! Why did Sugar feel she had the right to just go and complete the experiment without them?

"That's exactly what I'm saying." Sugar answered simply as she finished typing and turned back around to face her two angered friends.

"And what made you think you had the right to do this?" Cameron began, his voice gradually rising to a yell. "How could you take something we've all been dreaming of accomplishing for years and just go and test it yourself without our help or consent? You could've been killed doing this, Sugar! What if a single variable had been wrong and ended up splitting every cell in your body until you dissolved! Or what if you'd gone back and been trapped there? What if-"

"Cam down Cameron! Let me explain!" Sugar yelled, interrupting her distressed friend's rant. She then met Rory's eyes, silently willing him to hear her out as well. Rory wasn't as quick-tempered as Cameron, and he trusted Sugar to have good reasons behind her actions. "It was actually an accident the first time I went back, but I only went back five hours. I jumped back to the future immediately of course, not wanting to accidentally run into myself and destroy the space-time continuum, but the time travel had already been done."

"Did you do any more experiments after that?" Cameron asked in a much calmer voice than before, seeming to accept Sugar's explanation.

"Yes, but only a few, just to make sure the process wasn't simply a one-time accident. Luckily, each time I tested it, going back larger intervals of time each trial, I successfully made it to the past and back, no problem."

Rory continued to stand silently. He really didn't know what to think at this point. After all, what was one supposed to say when they figured out that one of their best friends since childhood had literally just discovered time travel, a project they'd been dreaming of completing since their childhood? But there was still one important question sitting in the back of his mind.

"Sugar, how far back did you travel, exactly?"

The brunette in question clasped her hands and looked down at her feet, quietly muttering an incomprehensible sentence.

"Sugar, what did you do?" Cameron continued Rory's question, taking a step towards the girl.

"The last time I tested it, I may or may not have gone back, say...thirty years or so?"

"SUGAR!" Both boys yelled simultaneously, Cameron leaning down to grab her by the shoulders, shaking her almost violently.

"I'm sorry!" Sugar yelled, sincerity apparent in her panicked voice. "I just..curiosity got the best of me and I wanted to see Santana and Brittany when they were our age and..." Sugar trailed off, her voice cracking as she broke into soft sobs, pushing Cameron's hands off of her.

Rory immediately ran to her aid and engulfed her in a comforting hug, not being able to stand the sight of her crying. While Cameron was the more confident and vocal of the two boys, Rory tended to be quieter, yet more sympathetic towards others.

"It's okay, Sugar," Rory softly spoke, "I probably would've done the same thing to see my dads. And you came right back, right? So everything's okay, alright?"

Sugar nodded in his arms and wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands. Rory pulled his arms away and glanced at Cameron, who was standing awkwardly to the side, but looked concerned for Sugar nonetheless.

After a few moments of sniffling and regaining her composure, Sugar finally spoke up once again. "So, now that you guys know, do you want to test out the machine?"

Rory and Cameron shared an excited glance, both of them nodding at Sugar like a pair of excited puppies, causing her to break out into laughter as her sobs finally subsided.

Sugar led the boys to her personal computer, then opened a large drawer beneath the glowing computer screen. After unplugging a few cables, she pulled out a small machine, about the size of a shoebox, covered in blinking lights, screens, wires and buttons. The machine was all but unfamiliar to Rory, as he was the one who'd designed the prototype when the three of them were fourteen and had just made the laboratory. It was astounding that something he'd designed had finally been made to fully function.

"We're going to want to take this somewhere else to test, as we can't run into our past selves." Sugar pointed out, gaining anxious nods of agreement from her two friends.

The three, still clad in their lab coats, headed out of the old chemistry classroom and down the hallway onto the top of a large staircase, where they could hear the rain still pouring outside. Rory could feel his body shaking with nervousness and excitement and he could see that Cameron was doing the same. The day had finally come. They were finally going to travel to the past like they'd always dreamed.

"Now, I think to start, we should just go back a few minutes. I'm warning you, though. The sensation's a bit weird, so brace yourself." Sugar said, fiddling with the controls. "I'm just going to set this so-AH!"

A thunderclap shook the building, causing Sugar to jump and drop the time machine onto the marble floor. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion as Rory watched the small machine hit the floor before everything was shrouded in a blinding white light.

Just as he lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the light, he found himself still in the hallway and accompanied by Sugar and Cameron, the time machine lying on the floor.

"No!" Sugar yelled, picking up the machine gingerly. "Guys, this is not good. We have to get back right away, or the repercussions could be horrendous!"

"Wait, Sugar. What do you mean?" Cameron questioned, rubbing the back of his head and looking slightly dazed. "We only went back a few minutes, right?"

Rory looked around the hall and realized something. No longer was it storming. In fact, it wasn't even dark out anymore. Also upon closer inspection, the entire hall and stairs looked entirely different, almost...new.

No. It couldn't be.

"Cameron, I don't think we went back just a couple of minutes." Rory stated, just before a bell echoed through the halls.

"Shit!" Sugar yelled as she fiddled with the machine at an exceedingly fast pace. "Guys, we've got to find somewhere to hide before-"

A flurry of teenage boys, all clad in blue and red blazers, suddenly filled the hallways, some completely ignoring the trio on the top of the stairs, but most glaring at their lack of uniform and especially the presence of Sugar, who was still tinkering with the time machine.

"Guys! Please, we have to hide before we do something that might screw up the future!" Sugar yelled over the cacophony of noise onset by the many boys all rushing towards the same location. She began to walk in the opposite direction of the many boys, avoiding them as well as she could as she tried to make her way down the hallway. Cameron and Rory immediately followed, despite being extremely confused.

"Wait, Sugar! Where exactly are we-oof!"

Rory was interrupted as a tall and slim brunette slammed into him, knocking him down to the ground.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" A slightly high-pitched voice exclaimed as Rory saw a hand reach down to help him up.

Rory gasped. He'd recognize that voice anywhere, that voice he'd known since the day he was born to his surrogate mother. He looked up to meet the familiar blue eyes he'd seen every day and night, and the perfectly coiffed hair he always tried to imitate as a child.

"Dad?"


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: Hey there...I know, it's been a while. It's actually been like 6 months. Whoops.**

**I wrote the start of this story, and I knew where it was going, but I didn't know how to get there. Then while I was writing something else, it suddenly came to me and this happened.**

**I'm sorry this took so long. .**

**I don't own Glee.**

**_(Italics are flashbacks, by the way)_  
><strong>

"I'm sorry, I-I just...guh"

Rory stuttered before pushing himself off the ground and sprinting down the hall, away from the younger form of his father and ignoring the shouts of his two friends. Swerving through the thick navy-and-red crowd, he dashed towards the nearest exit: a side stairwell that led to an emergency exit.

"Rory, wait up!" Rory could barely hear Sugar shout over the noises of the crowd. But he couldn't stop now. He had to get out.

Finally, after knocking over at least two students and maybe a science teacher, Rory slid down the stairwell railing and shoved open the side door. He rushed into the sunlight and collapsed on the soft grass just beyond, panting.

He heard the door open again moments later.

"Rory, what were you thinking?" Rory heard Sugar yell just before being smacked in the back of the head with what seemed to be a shoe.

"Sugar, was that really necessary?" Rory said, sitting up and rubbing the back of his head.

"Actually, the shoe was me." Cameron deadpanned. "But still, what the hell were you doing back there? I thought we agreed that in emergency situations such as this, the best tactic is to stay calm." Cameron moved to sit beside Rory, and Sugar sat beside him.

"I'm sorry, guys. I panicked." Rory placed his head between his hands. "But what would you do if one second you were in an empty building and the next you were knocked over by the teenage version of your own father?"

"Well, I have two moms, so that's beyond me..." Sugar said, just as Cameron said, "My dad's in a wheelchair and I'm freakishly tall, so I don't see how that would happen without me knocking him over first..."

"Oh, shut up, guys. You know what I mean." Rory finally stood back up and stared up at the Dalton building. It was strange seeing it in its original state, brand new and inhabited. It was unfortunate that it would eventually be closed and abandoned. "Let's just go back to our time and forget that this ever happened."

"I second that motion." Cameron said, raising his hand as he stood.

"Okay, guys. I'll just reprogram the machine and..." Sugar tinkered with the screens and buttons a bit, before suddenly halting, a frown forming on her face. "Oh no."

"What happened?" Rory said as he and Cameron sat around Sugar to examine the machine. Sugar pointed to a small light on the right side, just below the screen that displayed the desired destination. The light glowed a bright red.

"Fuck." Cameron sprawled out onto the ground, laying back and looking up at the sky. "We're going to be stuck here for a while."

The red light was bad. Really bad. When The three of them had first planned out the time machine, Rory had brought of the question as to whether or not they'd know if the universe they were returning to was the right one. He wanted to create some sort of indicator to tell them whether or not they'd changed the course of time so dramatically to the point that they wouldn't be able to return to their actual home. That was how the light came about.

The light was designed so that if they were returning to the same time that they had started from, but the universe was completely different, it would turn from green to red and keep the time machine from functioning.

And in this case, the light was red. Which was bad.

"It must have been when I ran into my dad." Rory groaned, eyes still fixated on the little red bulb. "I must have changed something...but what could it have been?"

That was the only unfortunate thing about the "red light" system. They knew that something was changed, but there was no way of knowing what.

"Well, I have a feeling we're not going to figure this out for a while." Sugar said as she picked up the time machine and pushed herself onto her feet. Then she began to walk away, towards the gates surrounding the school.

"Sugar! Where are you going?" Rory jumped up to join her, with Cameron following suit.

"We don't want to stay at Dalton for much longer; We might run into someone else that can mess up the future even more." Sugar explained. "We have to go somewhere safe."

"And where the hell might that be?" Cameron asked.

"You guys forget that I've been here before." Sugar smirked. "And I know just the place to go."

* * *

><p>"Sugar, sweetie, you're back!"<p>

"Hi, grandma, nice to see you again too!"

Rory and Cameron gaped as Sugar was engulfed by a much younger version of the Lisa Pierce they'd known.

"Sugar, how the hell-"

"Don't ask questions now," Sugar said, cutting off Cameron. "Just come inside and I'll explain in a second."

The two boys followed Sugar and Lisa into the Pierce household, an average-looking home with a very rustic and antique feel to it. Lisa brought them to the living room, where they sat down on one of two comfy-looking red couches. Lisa sat across from them.

"So Sugar, I know you told me you'd be back, but I had no idea it'd be so soon!" Lisa said, sipping a cup of tea that Rory hadn't realized she was carrying until that moment.

"Yeah, we may have stumbled here by accident this time around..." Sugar admitted. "But on a different note, these two are Rory and Cameron, my friends I was telling you about. Kurt and Artie's kids." sugar gestured to the boys, and Lisa gave them each a once-over. Rory could have sworn she looked at him for a bit longer, though, and – wait, did she just wink at him?

"Nice to meet you, ma'am." Cameron politely nodded his head.

"Oh, well I'm sure this isn't the fist time you're meeting me, honey, seeing as you're from the future and all." Lisa chuckled. "But it certainly is nice to meet you in this decade."

"So...ummm..." Rory began, wanting to ask Lisa how she knew about them, but wasn't able to find the words.

"I know you're wondering how I know about your time traveling." Lisa said, smiling at Rory. "But seeing as I'm not from your time, I think Sugar here might have an easier time explaining it."

All eyes went straight to Sugar, who tensed up immediately.

"Well...ummm...you guys know that I like to do a lot of work at home, away from the lab." Sugar began, eliciting nods from both Rory and Cameron. "But there was one day when...I sort of got caught."

Cameron immediately opened his mouth to speak, but was stopped by a harsh "Let her explain!" from Lisa.

"It was a month or so before I first time traveled, when I was reworking a few of our old equations. My grandparents were visiting, since it was the weekend of Brittany's birthday..."

* * *

><p>"<em>Sugar, dinner's ready!"<em>

"_One second, Mommy B, let me just finish one more question!"_

"_Your chemistry homework can wait! We don't want your dinner getting cold!"_

"_It's just one question! I'll be in there in a second!"_

_Sugar continued to scribble down a few more numbers and variables before crossing out several lines of her work. She circled one of the complete equations, writing "time travel?" beside it in small letters. She threw the notebook on the living room table, on top of her long-completed chemistry homework before rushing into the kitchen for her mother's birthday dinner._

_The dinner went by quickly, with Sugar answering her grandparents' questions about how her life had been and how school was going with short, noncommittal answers. She didn't have time to think about anything but the equations. She was so close to figuring it all out. As soon as she could, she excused herself from the table and ran up to her room, hoping to dig out some equations she'd written up a few months earlier from her desk. Finding the sheets she needed, she headed back downstairs, only to find her grandmother sitting on the couch, looking through her notebook._

"_Grandma!" Sugar practically screamed, running into the living room. "That's my notebook! Why would you-"_

"_Shhh. It's okay, Sugar." Lisa calmly said, turning another page of the notebook. "Sit." She patted the seat on the sofa next to her._

_Confused, Sugar sat beside her grandmother, watching as she thumbed through the many pages of equations, diagrams and theories she'd compiled over the past few weeks._

"_The theories you've come up with...they're impressive, especially for someone your age." Lisa said, closing the notebook and placing it on the table._

"_So you don't think I'm crazy?" Sugar whispered._

_Lisa placed her hands on her granddaughter's shoulders. "Of course I don't think you're crazy. In fact, I'm a believer myself."_

"_You are?" Sugar whispered with disbelief._

"_Your grandfather as well." Lisa smiled. "We always knew someone would find a way eventually, and though we never had the ideas or the intelligence to figure it out ourselves, we believe it is fully possible, and that time travelers have been influencing our history as far back as we can remember, maybe even further."_

"_So you've believed this your whole life?" Sugar asked, barely believing what she was hearing._

"_Of course. We've even taught your mother to believe, though many thought she was crazy. I don't blame them, though. The things your mother would come up with..." Lisa trailed off. "Anyway, we'd better get back to the kitchen soon. There's a rainbow cake in there with your mother's name on it, and we have a birthday to celebrate."_

* * *

><p>"And that's where I got the idea. So when I came back to this time period the first time, I came here first, knowing that my grandparents would believe me and give me a place to stay." Sugar finished, smiling at Lisa.<p>

"So what are we supposed to do now?" Cameron asked, ruining the touching moment between Sugar and her grandmother. "It's great that we have a place to stay and all, but we really should work on the whole 'fixing the future' thing."

"You're right, he is a bit of a downer." Lisa whispered fairly loudly to her granddaughter, earning her a snort from Rory and a pout from Cameron. She then turned to Cameron. "I hate to break it to you, but there's no way of truly knowing what it is that you did to change the future. The best chance you three have is to stick around and observe, using what your parents have told you about their pasts to see if anything's different."

"Ugh, now I really wish I'd listened to my dads when they told me all those sappy stories about the 'good old days'" Rory groaned, burying his face in his hands. "It's probably something to do with my dads, anyway, seeing as the only thing that we've done so far was knock my dad over. But I don't know how we'll know when-"

Rory was cut off by the sound of something buzzing in his pocket.

"Guys, that's my phone." Rory said, confused. He pulled the device out of his pocket. "Why would it be going off right now? We're – Oh my god."

On the small screen of the phone blinked not a text message, but a calendar reminder.

**Anniversary of when we first met! Buy Blaine flowers! 3**

"Guys, this isn't my phone." Rory realized. "This is my dad's. Kurt's to be exact."

"How did you get his phone? What does it say?" Sugar asked as she and Cameron leaned in to get a better look at the screen.

"We have the same phone, so I must have accidentally grabbed it on my way out of the house." Rory explained. "And it looks like the clock is still ticking at the same time it was before we came back here." He looked at the phone's clock, which indicated that it was midnight on the day after they traveled back in time.

"Right! Because I set the machine to travel few hours less than thirty years exactly so that when I traveled at night I could arrive during the day!" Sugar said excitedly.

"So this is what we messed up." Cameron said as he pointed to the phone's screen. "Nice one, Rory. By running into Kurt, you made it so your dads never met."

Rory dropped the phone on the floor and fell back onto the couch with a groan. This was one problem that was going to be tough to fix.


End file.
